TEPCO admitted that that the leak occurred when workers were trying to pump large amounts of rainwater, which had built up within a barrier surrounding several tanks as a typhoon was striking Japan’s shore, into the storage receptacle. The storage tanks in question had been built on an incline, and only one tank had a water gauge. The workers thought that they were filling the tank to 98.6% capacity, but because it was located further down the hill from the gauge, in fact, it overflowed. During the proceedings, NRA Secretary-General Katsuhiko Ikeda slammed TEPCO for its continuing poor handling of the water crisis. “That these leaks occurred due to human error is very regrettable. The failure to make rudimentary checks reflects a clear deterioration in the ability to manage the site,” he said. “Problems have been caused by basic mistakes. They will recur unless appropriate site control measures are taken.” Ikeda is urging TEPCO to increase the number of workers at Fukushima Daiichi, including bringing staff in from its other plants. That could affect the company’s ability to restart reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in Niigata Prefecture, which officials hope will bring it back to profitability.

Indeed, TEPCO is in a financial quagmire right now. Although the company is currently valued at $83 billion, that number is misleading. It includes assets such as reactors #5 and #6 at Fukushima Daiichi, and four reactors at the nearby Fukushima Daini plant. All six will most likely be decommissioned before they ever go back online. And, the utility posted $27 billion in losses since the crisis first started, and is expected to lose $21 billion more by the end of this fiscal year. In fact, the company’s debts are five times that of its assets. “It’s all Kabuki [theater]. TEPCO still faces significant problems,” said Tom O’Sullivan, a Tokyo-based energy consultant. “You have the trade minister saying that the utility is fine. You have TEPCO’s president…applying for restarts, and you have banks falling in line to roll over loans. It’s a very orchestrated presentation.” CV Ramachandran, an executive with Alix Partners in Hong Kong, observed, “The biggest challenge in the TEPCO situation is that the total liabilities are unknown. Estimates vary widely and the latest water leakage issues are likely to further increase liabilities.”

On October 9th workers disconnected the wrong pipe nearby the desalination machines and hence got in contact with highly radioactive water (about 34,0...

On October 9th workers disconnected the wrong pipe nearby the desalination machines and hence got in contact with highly radioactive water (about 34,000,000 Bq/l according to Asahi TV).
The six workers have undergone a decontamination process but the news sources I could check out did not report the dose they absorbed.
The string of operation errors occourring at Fuku 1 gets longer and longer by the day.
Tepco must drop attempts to restart its other npps and concentrate all its energies and available personnel on cleaning up the mess they have in their hands at Fuku 1.

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(Unregistered) Beppe
says:

According to Jiji "Rice Harvested within 20-Kilometer Radius of Fukushima N-Plant".
The rice will be sold to the state for stockpiling...

According to Jiji "Rice Harvested within 20-Kilometer Radius of Fukushima N-Plant".
The rice will be sold to the state for stockpiling (I suspect this means that those who will eat it will not know where it comes from) and to "individual customers".
The news did not report the contamination level of the rice, if any.

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(Unregistered) Nalliah Thayabharan
says:

Building nuclear reactors in one of the most earthquake prone zones in the world does not show a lot of intelligence and no wonder those same people a...

Building nuclear reactors in one of the most earthquake prone zones in the world does not show a lot of intelligence and no wonder those same people are now clueless now about how to avoid open-air fission. Japan does NOT know how to fix the spent nuclear rod pools without running water into the ocean and filling up tanks.